Bill's Garden Chinese Gourmet

Josh and I have been lacking a decent neighborhood Chinese restaurant for the last 5 years. Sure we love Big Bowl, but its pricey and a chain - and whenever possible we like to support local small business owners. Most of the Chinese restaurants we've tried have the exact same food - the same stuff that's on any given buffet around the state. So tonight we hit Bill's in South Mpls, which is just a short drive away from our house and not too far from Joey D's (Alison can post a review of them sometime).

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Payment: Cash, Visa or Mastercard
Dine in/Carry out (Large menu with lots of lunch options for $5)
Prices: Small order of chicken $4.95, large $10, egg rolls $2.50 (2), wontons $3.00 (10) Total: $22.50 and we have a lot of food left over

What we ordered: Lemon Chicken, Sesame Chicken, Egg Rolls, Wontons

Best thing: Lemon sauce was very tasty and obviously homemade - loved that the sauce was on the side so I could add what I wanted

Worst thing: Felt a little too much like fair food - insofar as we ordered too many fried things and not enough other stuff. That'll be remedied next time we try it - I vote for trying the mongolian beef and asking what other entrees we could get that isn't fried.

Wonton Status: Good balance between fried (not too heavy) and cream cheesy (I am a very picky connoisseur of the wonton/crab rangoon

Other notes: while waiting for our to go order, I looked at the magazines on the coffee table - a few of them were from 1995. I'm thinking Bill (who actually took our order and is Asian) is more into the food and less into keeping his reading material up to date.